4 hours of Arah EM and no shards....

Just to point out, while i have been reading the forums daily since release, I have never posted until now. I really feel I should share my experience which doesn’t only affect me, but the community as a whole.

This is not a post about complaining how hard Arah is and how it should be nerfed and what not, but rather a complaint about how rewards are given at the end of the run and that can really be a problem in harder/longer dungeons.

Before you start telling me Learn to play, let me give you a bit of background. This is not my first MMO and wont be the last. I’ve played in serious raiding guilds in WoW for over 5 years, so the concept of countless wiping/learning curves is not new to me. Currently i have two lvl 80s that i do explorable dungeons with daily. I have all AC/CM paths on farm and i have done some of the other dungeons on Explorable mode as well. Both of my characters have full AC/CM sets. So the problem isn’t skill related…

I’ve been running Arah for the past few days, not only is it nearly impossible to get a group for it, but we also end up with no rewards…Why?
On sunday, I did Arah path 2, my first time in the instance. We spent 2 hours getting to Our favorite giganticus w/e dog is and the wipe fest began.

I was running with my warrior with full exotic armor toughness/vita/power and full defensive/support treats.
Ending up with 2100 tougness and 25k hp. We had another warrior and 2 thieves and an elementalist i believe. Point is the only people who were alive troughout the second phase were me and the other warrior. we basically 2 manned the boss down to 25 % as the rest of the group was getting one shot and kept WP running back.
So eventually I got into an argument with the group leader who was blaming me for wiping, yet I he was the one running back 5 times per attempt; In the end he left and the instance reset, after 2 hours of clearing and 1 hour of wiping on the boss.

Yesterday, I decided to give in another shot. Arah path 1. We began at 8pm.Took us 4 hours to clear to the the giganticus retardicus, i was soloing the boss (my second time in this dungeon) for about 10 min while trying to rez downed people as they just wouldn’t run back (yes player’s fault, but also the only available WP was a 10 min run alone). After 3 attempts, I had to leave as I had to work in the morning.

So I’ve ran Arah twice so far, spent over 7 hours and didn’t even get 1 shard out of it…
Something really needs to be done about it, as it is Extremely frustrating.

Arah is very long and pretty challenging. It is very difficult to complete as a pug in a reasonable amount of time, and i believe i shouldn’t be punished for pugging dungeons as opposed to getting a “well organized group”. I quit WoW because i don’t want to be in a raiding guild, i want to be able to play casually and pug. That’s why i came to GW2, but it looks like pugging is not an option.

I understand the reason rewards are given at the end of the dungeon, to promote people running full runs and eliminate speed clears; we all know that. However, it doesn’t work for several dungeons.

What needs to be done is a proper usage of the dungeon DR system, that you have already implemented.

For example:

Each boss will give 10 shards for the first kill of the day, of that particular boss. Sequential kils would grant 5 shards, until daily reset. Also in order to prevent speed clearning, 1 or 2 hours boss lockout can be implemented (character bound). So for instance, if one was to only kill the first boss and then reset the dungeon. He wouldn’t receive any shards from the boss untill the lockout expires; after which, he would get 5 shards and a new 1-2 hours lockout. Dungeon completion reward should be lowered to 20 shards and bonus XP. If the player completes the dungeon, the individual boss lockout is removed.

So for example If I was to run Arah and Only kill the first boss starting at 12 pm.

a full 24 hour farm would grant roughly 70 shards. ( i don’t think anyone would farm the same boss for 24 hours, but there are some crazy people out there…)

If i was to run the dungeon once and complete a full clear (first run of the day)

5 bosses 10 shards each and 20 from dungeon completion=70 shards and boss lockout reset, which would now allow me to run the dungeon again, but for 5 shards per boss +20 for completion. Which would result in another 45.

This is just an idea that wouldn’t penalize players who get stuck on a boss for hours and just have to call it a night for whatever reason and are unable to complete the dungeon and would also minimize speed clears.
There is no MMO out there that gives NO rewards to players, unless they complete the entire dungeon.

Arah is easy except for path 4 becasuse it seems bugged once you get the mechanics down. Seems you keep inviting noobs to your party from what I read you were trying to ress players during a fight thats a big no no. Before you start the fight go through a strategy and explain the bosses functions. You spent 2hrs on a boss? After the first 2 wipes you should have took a step back and asked what am I doing wrong and how can I prevent us from wiping? You should have then tabbed out and checked some tips/guides on google about the boss you are having difficulty with then came back and apply that knowledge instead of wasting 2hrs making the same mistakes. I have pugged this boss over 20x you just have to step up and lead your group instead of having everyone autoattack everything and expect to win

First, sorry you’ve had such a rough time with Arah. It’s a long and tough cookie to crack, but it can be done. RoRo has good advice: step back and reassess the situation. Define a leader. Build a strategy, and execute.

Now, you brought up a great concept for the DR system rewarding unique boss deaths. While I certainly don’t like to jump the gun on making claims, our next patch SHOULD include a newly developed reward system for people who couldn’t make it to the end that should alleviate a bit of this “walking away with nothing” feeling you have.
Personally, I love that my content kills players and challenges them. I feel pretty kitteny though when my content beats someone into the ground and takes their lunch money. I at least want you to walk away with something more than a repair bill and some random blues, and folks here are working on that very thing.
That being said, our next patch SHOULD contain some revamped loot drops from bosses that have the chance of giving small token rewards (among other things), which should help alleviate that.

Thank you for taking the time to look into my fairly long post Robert. I was secretly hoping that you would look into it and I must say that I am really amazed by the fact that Devs are that involved with the gaming community at such a level.

While I understand that Arah, being an end game dungeon, and takes time to get the hang of and also that any dungeon or by that token any mechanic becomes easy with enough time invested and practice, it still doesn’t make it easy for pugs to clear.

The reason behind is that first of all, you have to be lucky enough to find experienced players, who have done the dungeon several time already and know the mechanics well.
It is true that someone needs to take the leadership and explain the encounters mechanics and such, that being said, I cannot teach people how to dodge out of projectiles being thrown at them or dodge red circles or boss charges ( this is on the players discretion).

People are often running glass cannon builds, non support abilities and get one shot anyway. As already mentionned resing people up on phase 2 is problematic. Problem is you cannot solo or 2 man the boss indefinitely while the rest of the group that is getting one shot is running back over and over again.

Yes people would learn, but it takes time, and rarely people learn during their first attempts, which results in other people leaving and looking for more and then everything starts over again. For dungeons as this one, it’s recommended to get a group that regularely runs together, knows the strats and mechanics and everything goes smooth.

Every group had a horribly rough time in Arah while they were learning mechanics, but that first batch of people teach others/make long posts about how to clear content. Give me 4 random but competent players and I could coach them through sylvari route in maybe 2 hours

There does need to be some kind of per-boss reward that isn’t vendor trash, though. An easy way to motivate people would be giving each dungeon sets of unique armor skins that can only be obtained by drops and drops randomly – 1% chance off trash, 10% chance off bosses, pieces are totally random (i.e. can get heavy armor even if you’re on a light class) but the pieces themselves can be traded in for tokens. This way people who really want the skin will go grind the dungeon, and people who dont care will happily take free tokens

There need to be token drops on each boss, with the majority of the tokens awarded at the end of the dungeon. It’s really silly to punish players just to prevent speed runners and exploiters. This entire line of thought puzzles me. Look at all the problems that honest players have had with the DR system. Now we also have to contend with the very real possibility of receiving absolutely no tokens after spending hours in a dungeon. This is outrageous to be honest. What do you think Robert, do you really feel this is the right direction for you guys to go?

Speaking as someone who has cleared path 1 as a first time in dungeon with an experienced group (some who had cleared Giganticus, but nobody had cleared the entire path). I have to agree that the way rewards work is horrid. The idea that the grants the tokens and have NO way to get additional tokens before hand isn’t fixing a problem (people farming easy bosses), it is making worse problems even more. Let me give you an example:

Our group was doing HoTW path 1 – cleared the entire dungeon, but last boss. Nobody had even died in the group. Feeling really good boss is at 10% and I am rocking mace/shield and beating him down.

Then power goes off.

I get back in to find myself dead on the outside of the dungeon with no reward. If that had been when we cleared path 1 Arah I probably would be taking a vacation from the game. Lucky it is a quick 20 min dungeon we do basically daily. Also it bugged me in that the group re-ran the instance for me, but it still “thought” I had finished the dungeon and was only rewarded 20 instead of the 60 on the first daily run.

There need to be token drops on each boss, with the majority of the tokens awarded at the end of the dungeon. It’s really silly to punish players just to prevent speed runners and exploiters. This entire line of thought puzzles me. Look at all the problems that honest players have had with the DR system. Now we also have to contend with the very real possibility of receiving absolutely no tokens after spending hours in a dungeon. This is outrageous to be honest. What do you think Robert, do you really feel this is the right direction for you guys to go?

I so feel that way too. I agree also with the OP in most things especially spreading out the distribution of shards. Yesterday I did 4 hrs of Arah path 4, in which we had 4 people leaving in between and had to reform our group (loosing valuable time). We did get through to the final boss after about 3 hrs. We gave the final boss 4 or 5 attempts then in between someone left again so we had to look again for someone. After an hour me and another group member had to call it a day as it was way past our play time. We got nothing as reward in the end and we were a bit frustrated especially because we successfully killed the other bosses, had a real successful attempt at the mesmer nightmare boss and felt we should have been better rewarded for getting the better of her other than a few blue trash loot from the chest. So yes I am eagerly waiting to see if the next build will improve on all these things as Robert stated. End of the day the fun is also in being rewarded adequately for time and efforts put in.

First, sorry you’ve had such a rough time with Arah. It’s a long and tough cookie to crack, but it can be done. RoRo has good advice: step back and reassess the situation. Define a leader. Build a strategy, and execute.

Now, you brought up a great concept for the DR system rewarding unique boss deaths. While I certainly don’t like to jump the gun on making claims, our next patch SHOULD include a newly developed reward system for people who couldn’t make it to the end that should alleviate a bit of this “walking away with nothing” feeling you have.
Personally, I love that my content kills players and challenges them. I feel pretty kitteny though when my content beats someone into the ground and takes their lunch money. I at least want you to walk away with something more than a repair bill and some random blues, and folks here are working on that very thing.
That being said, our next patch SHOULD contain some revamped loot drops from bosses that have the chance of giving small token rewards (among other things), which should help alleviate that.

Everyone take a shot every time you see the word “should” in that quote, then go run a dungeon. You might find it difficult to play, but at least it’ll be painless.

I agree with AstralStorms. I like the lupicus: is challenging, which mean funny. The problem is you punish to hard a mistake of a single player. Avoid his AoE is a pain and many times it’s because you are out of endurance (as Charr I use Hidden Pistol and Charzooka as additional dodge).
Robert Hrouda is right, content must be challenging and Arah, as the highest level dungeon, should be hard and not for everyone.
But again: you punish too much.
Why don’t you close the arena of the Lupicus, so it’s not possible to ress (from the waypoint), but you place the waypoint very close to the arena?
This way you MUST complete it flawlessly but the punishment for failing is not hard.
(Yes, I understand this way players who die have to wait but it’s far less frustrating then have a 10min walk like in path 1).
I think there must be a different from “hard” to “frustrating”. I understand it’s not always possible but I’m sure ArenaNet will find a good solution.

On the off chance that Robert is keeping an eye on this, do you believe that implementing a system where we can “Save Progress” in a dungeon can be implemented? So that if you have spent hours and hours in the dungeon and not completed it, you can start at that point with your mates the next day? Would help in learning mechanics without the need to run the first half of the dungeon.

Why don’t you close the arena of the Lupicus, so it’s not possible to ress (from the waypoint), but you place the waypoint very close to the arena?
This way you MUST complete it flawlessly but the punishment for failing is not hard.
(Yes, I understand this way players who die have to wait but it’s far less frustrating then have a 10min walk like in path 1).

The problem with a system like this is people going afk while waiting for the rest to finish/die. It already happened in GW1 when people died during instances and just went silently afk while dead and waiting for a res.
(I did too sometimes, it’s just boring to lie there or wait at a waypoint for people to finish off enemies or wipe the party)

Why don’t you close the arena of the Lupicus, so it’s not possible to ress (from the waypoint), but you place the waypoint very close to the arena?
This way you MUST complete it flawlessly but the punishment for failing is not hard.
(Yes, I understand this way players who die have to wait but it’s far less frustrating then have a 10min walk like in path 1).

The problem with a system like this is people going afk while waiting for the rest to finish/die. It already happened in GW1 when people died during instances and just went silently afk while dead and waiting for a res.
(I did too sometimes, it’s just boring to lie there or wait at a waypoint for people to finish off enemies or wipe the party)

Yes, I realize that could lead to this problem but I think this is far less important then 30min walk.

I feel like halfway reward tokens are always kinda tricky. If you give out too much, people get lazy and don’t bother finishing the dungeon at all, give too little and it doesn’t make that much of a difference. One thing I’ve loved about the new system w/ all the tokens at the end is that more people are willing or at least forced to try. In some instance it works out that we get to experience new things, but on the other hand I’ve experienced the same thing as the OP.

I would love to see
1. Ability to pass group leader. I feel like there should be a star or mark next to the party leader who opened the instance. In other games, when the party leader left the group, the next person who was invited to the group would inherit the leadership, it would be awesome if we can do it here – pass the leadership on to the next member when the leader completely leaves the group.

2. Better boxes and dungeon drop rates. Instead of having more tokens, perhaps devs can look into improving the box and mob drop table? I mean 4 hrs in Arah? you can prob gather/event farm enough karma/gold to just craft a similar exotic in less time with no repair bill. If mobs had better loot and boxes had better loot (perhaps getting better as you get deeper into the dungeon, so people don’t just farm the first area,) then players will feel rewarded as they progress and be able to cover repair bills.

Anyway I noticed such dissapointment a few days ago. It’s weird our setup wasn’t much different then before on the 3rd path inside AC and yet we had a very hard time suddenly. We were stuck for about 2.5 hours the second time on defending two crystals from the zerglings before we gave up since we do have to sleep at some point or we be sleepin at work. Yet a few days before we did that same run with a 80 necro instead of 40 and ended up going alright after a few wipes.

I think money wise AC has been very profitable to me. Using the Omnomberry Bars to increase my gold find by 40% I noticed that about 2 gold type mobs drop 7 silver each, the final boss drops around 21 silver and then the 1st time path rewards on each run gets me close to a gold each run with little repair cost cause the other 2 paths are quite easy to do. Though my plan to do 2 runs at night and switch between the Asura and Human runs on odd/even days got ruined since my group now prefers to avoid that asura run till we got better gear in general.

We’ve talked about saving progress in dungeons, and it’s currently on a list of things for our tech-priests to look into. There’s no code to support it right now, but it is something we’re exploring the possibilities of.

I say /should/ in my post because they are assumptions. Our current plan is to roll out new loot stuff for dungeons next path, and I assume it will get done since I’m pretty vocal about it, and I know the people working on it, and trust them to have it done and tested in time.
And I assume players will like better loot drops with token potential on bosses. We’ll evaluate the system with some play tests and see how we feel,and of course your feedback here on the forums will help us in fixing/adjusting things as well.

So no more blue fest from dungeons or whites from extremely hard to kill bosses? That’s good to hear. Did over 50 runs on dungeons, never really got anything good from chests, only mobs kills. Only exotic stuff i ever got was a superior rune, that is soulbound… So far, only Ascalonian bosses seems worth the kill, since they drop 15~10 silver.

I’m not saying to give an exotic every run, just saying that spending 20 minutes in Orr killing mobs means 3~4 yellows while 3 hours in dungeons means blues all the time. I think even dragon chests give me better stuff.

The world is teeming with unnecessary people.
It is God’s decision that i fight.
As knight of honor, as protector of the sin. I sacrifice myself, for the blood of criminals.

Robert Hrouda: quote is not working, but this is incredible news! That was one of my favorite parts of Guild Wars! You have no idea how many times I did Sorrow’s Furnace and Tomb of the Primeval Kings for green items! Hopefully this will scratch that itch I’ve had to farm dungeons, thank you!

Robert, oh please. Are you joking?
I truly hope your plans to make boss drop tokens are something like 2-3 tokens at best with 0.05% droprate, i don’t want to see any more shard speedrun doing path 3 , first 2 bosses, reset, rinse repeat.

Also, the idea of save your progress is idiot. WE would see leechers joining groups with someone who already done 3/4 of arah, throwing away for free an arah armor with free tokens.

Try to focus on put an end on the kick system, with a more punishing and stable system as i already suggested on 2 threads:
If an online player is kicked, the entire party is kicked out, the dungeon is resetted.
Only way to allow kick: when a player is offline, and on afk status, triggered after 4 minutes not playing. Try to do something good for the community interest, instead of waste time improving methods to throw dungeon precious armor like arah available to the first newbie.

Having save states and “passable leader” would get VERY tricky, as you could abuse it, by coming back in as leader, and bringing everyone in with you at 75% completion, then re-leave, which passes leadership, and they backfill the slot and proceed to only have to run the last say 25. Then when done, bring u back in to re launch them at 75 and repeat.

Or, you have guy 1, whos save is at 75%, save 2 is at 30. Which does it choose, and does it erase one over the other, when someone chooses to revert.

Personally, I love that my content kills players and challenges them. I feel pretty kitteny though when my content beats someone into the ground and takes their lunch money. I at least want you to walk away with something more than a repair bill and some random blues, and folks here are working on that very thing.

Then perhaps you can make dungeons skillfully challenging instead of bombarding the player with cheap 1 shot tricks, terrible room management forcing us to fight the camera as well as the boss.

I don’t really see a point with token drops, necessarily, so long as they’re pretty random and rare but come in somewhat large stacks (about 20). This way they’re satisfying to get but impossible to farm.

Across the game I’d put a high priority on increasing the rarity of all chest, champion, veteran rewards. This is probably one of the bigger problems across the board, not just in dungeons. Dungeon bosses should have good drops, though. Eventually, I’d really like to see them have unique exotics they can drop, ala GW1. Just don’t make them insanely rare, like you have with so many other things in GW2. In GW1, it wasn’t such a big deal.

Yeah I agree with Plague, the veteran and champion drops in general are abysmal, usually worse than a regular mob of the same type. Right now they are universally not worth fighting for the most part given that you could easily kill 5-10 (or more for champs) of the regular mob type in the same time frame and get vastly more loot.

Having every boss drop tokens is fine, as long as people cannot farm for the full set or the weapon without killing the last boss. This could be done with a two-token system: Minor bosses drop only mass-produced tokens and end bosses drop the “keystone part” which should be required for chest, leg and weapon pieces.

It might be even better for the end boss of each path to drop a different keystone part. Make people do all paths instead of deliberately doing only the easier paths.

The only way you can really kill Giganticus Lupricus is through 3rd path because of one reason, the npc is ranged… while the other npcs are melee he would spawn a “Grub” at them and consume it straight away… so yeah it was impossible to kill him with at least 5 charges because of that.

And you might be mad that you tried it to do this and got nothing out of it, unfortunately GL resets if only 1 person is alive, and there is a waypoint that opens closer to you by the way if someone has not already mentioned.

I was doing Arah today and ummm I was at last boss like he was nearly dead, 25% left, I lagged heavily and got kicked to my character screen, clicked to log back in and I was taken back to the log in screen, by the time I got in, the boss was dead and I did not receive my 60 tokens… that is also something that needs to be taken in consideration…

P.S: My internet was still connected, I was not disconnected from my internet. It was a boot from Guild Wars 2.

add mats as reward… a beautifull pack of 3-5 T6 mats for each boss kill would be great… Mats are also a different kind of “token” since you change them for items in a way. This won’t change the game introducing more items or more money or more tokens; it will give bosses a new purpose for killing them and you won’t feel “empty handed” if you can’t complete the run.

Everyone can use mats and if you can’t, you can always “BlackLionSell” them.

Having save states and “passable leader” would get VERY tricky, as you could abuse it, by coming back in as leader, and bringing everyone in with you at 75% completion, then re-leave, which passes leadership, and they backfill the slot and proceed to only have to run the last say 25. Then when done, bring u back in to re launch them at 75 and repeat.

Or, you have guy 1, whos save is at 75%, save 2 is at 30. Which does it choose, and does it erase one over the other, when someone chooses to revert.

I have seen a system like that implemented with Task Forces in another game (a series of instanced missions), you could stop between missions and pick it up again. The rule was whoever went back and finished it finished the instance, so if you had 5 people log out, and 3 came back early and managed to finish it, it was finished and the two laggards got nothing. The “saved state” was not at the player/client level, it was at the server level, so it recorded the status for everyone in the party. That game had no way to replace teammates mid task force, so the saving idea wasn’t quite as complicated to implement, but I think it could still work if everyone realized that progress by any teammate on the dungeon was party-wide.

first time posting,
anyway i like these ideas, but my own idea is, go back to the old way where you get tokens in each chest but make it, i know people hate RNG, but make it random, either the amount you get or the frequency of getting them, that would be up too you guys(anet) to decided.